Totally Hip software today announced the
QuickTime Authoring Suite for Mac OS X. The suite consists of HipFlics 1.1, LiveSlideShow 2.0, and LiveStage Professional 3.0 -- all products that run natively on Mac OS X.

"This is an incredible time to be involved with QuickTime and OS X. Apple Computer's OS X offers our products unparalleled performance and stability not available before. We are incredibly excited to be the first company to offer our entire line of QuickTime authoring tools for OS X, and now we are offering them as a complete bundle with a savings of over $150", said David Gratton, vice president of marketing and sales for Totally Hip Software. "QuickTime developers will have all the tools they need to bring their projects successfully to the Web and CD ROM using our suite of tools."

With
LiveSlideShow
you can add transitions, voiceovers, sound effects, interactive elements -- such as arrows to move to the next slide -- and scrolling captions to any digital picture. And with the new media skins feature, consumers can now present their slideshows inside uniquely shaped themed players.

LiveSlideShow also features a background music track, allowing slideshows to be used for the Web, CD-ROM or e-mail delivery.

To use LiveSlideShow, you need to connect your camera and capture the pictures. To make a slideshow you just need to drag and drop your pictures into the timeline. You can add transitions and effects between the pictures using the same drag and drop method.

LiveSlideShow 2.0 features a built-in voice recorder so you can narrate your entire presentation, if you wish. If you don't like the sound of your own voice, you can add a background music track over the entire length of your presentation. (LiveSlideShow supports MP3, .wav, CD and other audio formats).

HipFlics, which was just updated last week to version 1.1, supports all the major codecs available in QuickTime. The new version also features better performance, new drag and drop presets built for QuickTime 5 and compatibility with Sorenson 3 Pro, VP3 and Zygovideo. In addition, Hipflics supports multiple video codecs within one movie.

Totally Hip contends that HipFlics is the perfect fit between QuickTime 5 Pro and some of the more high-end products that will cost more money. "HipFlics does for video compression what iMovie has done for video editing; get professional results with minimal effort," said a representative of Totally Hip.

The interface of HipFlics resembles that of Apple's iMovie, so it should be familiar to most users that would be interested in the product. To use HipFlics, you just drag and drop preset compression settings into the timeline. Advanced users can create their own custom settings or filters, and save them for future use; advanced users can also do batch processing via a simple drag and drop applet on the desktop.

HipFlics supports image cropping, rotating, watermarking and the ability to preview the user settings before compression begins. Users can preview as many as four different settings at once for comparison purposes.

The last product available in the suite is the company's flagship application,
LiveStage Professional. LiveStage Pro is used to integrate digital media content and create interactive movie experiences. LiveStage Professional provides developers with many tools and allows them to incorporate over 200 industry standard formats such as GIF, JPEG, Flash media, MP3 Photoshop documents, AIF, MIDI, VR, MPEG and more, into a single project.

LiveStage Pro 3.0 features include Interactive media skins that allow for delivery of custom interfaces; Flash 4 support for integrating Flash with all other QuickTime media including video; XML support for the dynamic creation of content or movies; server side connectivity for database support and movie generation; over seventy new wired actions to be added to the QScript scripting language; and upgraded users manual including reference guide, tutorials and sample projects.